In the War on Coca, Colombian Growers Simply Move Along

By JUAN FORERO

Published: March 17, 2001

LLORENTE, Colombia, March 12 — This isolated town used to be as sedate and dirt poor as all the rest.

Then came coca and its byproducts, discos and prostitutes, pool halls and cantinas, cheap hotels and the businesses that cater to newcomers, stores with wood planks, tin sheeting and other materials for flimsy but serviceable housing.

The change began more than a year ago, local government officials and residents say, but accelerated with a huge American-backed campaign to destroy coca fields in adjacent Putumayo Province. The effort, the officials said, displaced coca growers and their crops, sending them to the jungles here in Nariño Province. It is a familiar pattern. Coca came to Colombia because of success in eliminating it in Bolivia and Peru, without aerial spraying.

"What the fumigation did was to transfer the phenomenon from Putumayo to Nariño," said Gov. Parmenio Cuéllar of Nariño. "And if they fumigate Nariño, the problem will go to another place."

Nowhere are the effects more visible than in this town on Highway 10, once a sleepy community of poor farmers that is luring hundreds of former Putumayo farmers, coca-laboratory workers and others drawn by the coca trade.

"They call this Little Putumayo, and they say people who are coming here are leaving Putumayo because of the fumigation," said the Rev. Domingo Moreno, a Roman Catholic priest who works in Llorente. "The people, more and more, are lured by coca, tempted by the magic leaf. Not only are they starting to plant coca, but they're also leaving behind the other plants they grew, plantation bananas and cacao."

Critics of aerial defoliation say the expansion of coca in Nariño and elsewhere bore out a central warning about the plan to destroy coca in Putumayo: that eradication in one region causes coca to move to others.

"The argument I've always made is that the fumigation will not, in any way, do away with the coca fields," said Carlos Palacios, an expert on the coca trade and the human development secretary in the town of Valle del Guamués in Putumayo. "What fumigation does is that it causes the fields to simply transfer to other places."

Opposition to spraying is so strong in southern Colombia that mayors, church officials and others have been pushing President Andrés Pastrana's government and the United States to stop the spraying. Mr. Cuéllar and three other governors visited Washington this week to criticize the program and to lobby for aid to improve agriculture.

American officials counter that the size of the Nariño crop, with fewer than 15,000 acres under cultivation, is manageable compared with the 250,000 acres that existed in the coca-growing heartland of Putumayo and Caquetá Provinces before large-scale spraying began in late December. The Americans also note that the movement of people and planting of coca in Nariño began long before the spraying in Putumayo.

The Americans say the defoliation effort, called Plan Colombia, with its reliance on crop dusters, military helicopters and battalions of Colombian antinarcotics troops, is intended to contain the spread of coca. The plan is "intended to apply pressure in more places simultaneously than previously possible," said Jim Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement.

But the officials, and their Colombian counterparts, are worried.

"We're concerned about Nariño," an official at the American Embassy said. "Right now, there's a lot more coca there, in Nariño, so much so that in fact it's going to be one of our next priorities."

Mr. Cuéllar said the migration into the province began before the spraying in Putumayo, as farmers and others in the coca trade became convinced that a broad plan to wipe out coca was going to become a reality. But he said the movement of people grew significantly in late September, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia closed roads throughout Putumayo to prove that it was in control, strangling the coca trade in the process.

On Dec. 19, Plan Colombia, with a goal of halving the estimated 336,000 acres of coca in five years, began. Financed with a $1.1 billion American aid package, the operation denuded 75,000 acres of coca in Putumayo in two months. Those whose farms became instantly worthless quickly packed up and left for Nariño.

Provincial officials and workers from the central government's social service agency, Solidarity, said the displacement of people from Putumayo had stretched resources in Nariño. Shantytowns have sprouted on the outskirts of Pasto, the capital. Crime has increased.

An estimated 10,000 people have fled Putumayo since September, with 1,600 settling in neighboring Ecuador, according to the director of Solidarity, Fernando Medellín. An additional 8,400 dispersed into Nariño, Cauca and Huila Provinces, with most settling in this province, Mr. Medellín said. In Pasto, nearly 900 arrived in February, and about 40 new families arrive every week.